My wife has been having problems playing sims 3 a lot. The biggest problem has been lag/jitter issues. When moving the camera around frame rates drop down to 30 FPS or less and you get a lot of jitter/lag around the screen when the camera moves. When it's not FPS is about 90. Usually I think it's more outside parts of Sims 3 that it happens. I've tweaked with the settings and I don't get any preformance increase unless I drop all of the graphics settings to the lowest setting which shouldn't be because I have a HIS ATI 4850 HD OCed to 700 MHZ CPU/1100 MHZ Mem. I've also noticed that the HDD likes to spin up when ever you move around in Sims 3. No programs are open when running it either The rest of the specs are Athlon II 3.0 GHZ OCed to 3.2 GHZ, 3 GB DDR2 1066, 7200 RPM 160 GB HDD, Windows Vista 32 bit. I would appreciate any help.

In order to better solve your problem, please go through the following as listed below:

Sims 3 - Game lags or fails to load or is glitchyIssues

Have you just updated to a newer patch or installed a new Expansion Pack and/or Stuff Pack?

Do you suddenly find your game is failing to load past the loading bar or after selecting your save game? Or does it take hours to load when previously it only took minutes?

Do you experience glitches like

missing books, traits, cannot carry out skill-related activities, etc

have long strings name with paths instead of the objects' names

missing previously installed content

and many more

Causes
Then, you have custom content that is not compatible with this new game version or is broken/corrupted by the patching/installing.
If you have a core mod that is not compatible, the game would simply crash back to Desktop.

To determine if it is content-related, follow this FAQ on how to GameHelp:Remove_TS3_Custom_Contentwiki; don't forget the *caches and test using a New game.
If the New game can load and has no issues, the problem is caused by your .packages CC.

If you're still experiencing issues, rename \...Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 to something else, so the game will re-generate a new set of user's folders when you next load a New game to test.
If the New game can load and has no issues, the problem is caused by your .Sims3Packs CC or some other files in your previous User folders.

Fixing your game

If the problem is with .packages CC

If the new game can load, then read this FAQ on how to rectify the Lag issue and to find the problem content: Game_Help:Package_File_Lagwiki.

If you have glitches, remove the hacks folder or the folder where you placed all the hacks or mods - tuning mods, object mods, script mods.

If your custom content does not show up, verify framework is still intact using MonkeyBars or Dashboard. Also verify on creators' downloads pages if the CC item needs to be updated for the patch/pack.

If none of the above helps in identifying the problem content, do the 50% method: split your CC into halves. Place one half at a time to test. If one batch is fine, then that goes in the good CC category, so you concentrate on the other half. When you have a batch that causes the same glitch, half that again, and so on...you might need to refresh caches each time you load the game Game_Help:Sims_3_Delete_Cache_Fileswiki. The full FAQ guide is available in Game Help:TS3 Finding Problem Custom Content.

If the problem is with .Sims3Packs CC

Try running Dashboard on the DCBackup folder to see if it can detect anything wrong with those .packages

Otherwise, you'd need to revisit the site where you get the Sims3Packs from to see if if there's a new update or they need fixing, etc.

Remember: during all the above testing, always load a new game to test (you can however load the same new game if you saved that). Never load a pre-patched or pre-EP/SP saved game as removing custom content and caches will reset all the custom content in that world to base-game items and it won't load them back if you happen to Save before you Quit.

On occasion you might be asked to do a long FAQ - please make sure you do all the steps and don't just skip over them. You'll often find that these long FAQs have all the details you need. If nothing in the above FAQs fixes your problem you may post again detailing exactly which you have done and which steps failed.

Hey werismyki, my Issue isn't in your list, but it's also a lag/freeze. The problem I have is that my lag doesnt' show up right away. It only ever occurs when I've been playing a household lot for a few days. So I can start a new game, and I guarantee it will run smoothly, but after a day or two, the lag will come back.

It's a weird kind of lag/freeze, because certain animations still work, like you can see the Plumbob still animated and video on the tv. But everything else is frozen. It'll just be for a sec, and work fine again for a few minutes. Then lag/freeze again. But it becomes more and more frequent until it becomes unplayable

Dumb question, but should I go ahead and test it out on a new game even though it will take a few days?

----->Sleep is for people that have never played Sims<-----
----->Maybe people should actually try Sims 4 before they criticize it. It's my favorite Sims so far.<-----

kletus4pres - It's worth making a new game to test, just to be sure that it's not an issue with your existing saves causing it. Also, please make your own new thread, so we can keep your issues separate from the original poster's. Thanks.

kletus4pres - It's worth making a new game to test, just to be sure that it's not an issue with your existing saves causing it. Also, please make your own new thread, so we can keep your issues separate from the original poster's. Thanks.

Well i didn't want to start another thread about the same basic problem, but okay then

----->Sleep is for people that have never played Sims<-----
----->Maybe people should actually try Sims 4 before they criticize it. It's my favorite Sims so far.<-----

Guys, please make your own thread if you're having issues. There are a lot of different reasons this can be happening (system related, custom content related, user files related, heat, etc.) and it's a lot easier to figure out what YOUR lag problems are caused by if we have everyone post their own thread where we can help you one-on-one.

Totally vanilla, no CC in .package or .Sims3Pack format at all? Not even Riverview?

Do you have Ambitions?
Do you experience this lag in a new SunsetValley or Twinbrook or a pre-patch saved games?
And does it occur for every game? Do you notice any similarities when the lag would be triggered?

None at all I did a clean install of the game so no there is no custom content at all. Ambitions is installed right now. I have gone through and tried to run the base game by itself to see if there is still camera jitter. Right now ambitions is installed and world adventures The lag/camera jitter occurs in Sunset park and twinbrooks and it occurs 99% of the time even moving the camera just a little bit. I up'ed my graphics card CPU OC to 725 MHZ but I'm still not getting any type of performance change. I might do a volt mod to the card and up the OC even more if I can't get it too run any better without a volt mod.

Patch WA manually using the direct download Game_Help:TS3_Patchingwiki.
I'm not sure if it is related or a possible cause, but it can't hurt to try.

I don't think any overclocking is of any use for Sims 3, as the coding has inherent issues.

And every new EP seems to undo patch fixes released in previous patches, so I'm thinking this may be the derelict vehicles and overcrowding town issue we've had before or a variation of such, or with the introduction of Professions in Ambitions - vehicles and Sims/co-workers are spawned with new code that wreaks havoc.
(Just my hypothesis - I haven't dug into the game code or anything )

I don't do a lot of crazy OCing. Most of the OCing I do is for my own games and other stuff. Has anyone had problems on here when the OC their CPU with the FSB. I'm wondering if that might be causing the problem of lag. I don't experience any problems with my games the the overclocks. I'll test it out and report back to what happened.

I know that heat isn't an issue my cpu only runs at about 40c and the graphics card is only at 60c. It's been updated to the most recent patch and there isn't any custom content at all.

Did you record those temps right in the middle of game play or after you closed the game? I use Hwmonitor and leave it running while playing because it will actually record peak temps while gaming. It will record very different temps as opposed to a program you use even just right after playing.

I would suggest restoring your motherboard settings to defaults and see if that makes a difference.

Did you record those temps right in the middle of game play or after you closed the game? I use Hwmonitor and leave it running while playing because it will actually record peak temps while gaming. It will record very different temps as opposed to a program you use even just right after playing.

I would suggest restoring your motherboard settings to defaults and see if that makes a difference.

I dialed back my OC and still no increase in performance. Even with AA turned completely off. Running the game it's about 42c and 30 idle for CPU. Added another fan to cool it down. The GPU is running at about 60c. The fan speed is up to 75% though.

Just as a follow up I've fixed the problem. I turned my overclock up even higher to 3.5 GHZ and camera jitter has significantly dropped and rarely happens. I don't know if this game is optimized for Intel's only. Which I'm assuming is the problem with having a AMD and all of the graphic settings being put up high.

The game works fine on AMD CPUs. Personal experience. I don't know why overclocking fixed your problem. If you run into any more problems, I would still suggest loading optimized defaults on the mobo and seeing how that goes. It probably had more to do with the exact settings of your overclock vs. not being clocked high enough.

I'm running a 3.0 GHZ stock AMD Athlon II so I'm not sure why the camera would jitter so much. It's way above the minimum requirements of a P4. The mobo did have the optimized settings being used too when I was trying to figure the problem out. I had just pushed it up to 3.5 tonight and the jitter practically went away.